Within its overall collection of five million printed volumes, the University of Iowa Libraries holds over 200,000 rare books. It also houses over 15,000 linear feet of manuscripts, unique archival records, hundreds of thousands of documents, photographs, and ephemeral publications, thousands of non-commercial sound recordings, motion pictures, and videotapes, and, increasingly, records “born digital.”

While nearly all the printed rare books are represented by records in the InfoHawk catalog, most archival and ephemeral materials are described by “finding aids” which typically describe content folder by folder or container by container. To key word search these finding aids and other information about the collections, all at one time, use this Collection Guide.

Since items in research collections are typically old, fragile, highly valuable, or easily disorganized, they must be retrieved for readers from closed stacks and their use is supervised. Digital phography, scans, and photocopies are generally permitted.